Newton-Williams.com » Good books

The Bostonians

Gareth — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:04:51 +0000

What an epic sense of relief? Not relief to have finished; relief to have begun. Henry James has, to my view, climbed to sit in the lonely company of the other authors who are, I consider, capable of ending a book appropriately. The Bostonian’s gentle paragraphs, characters, scenes, ideas and plot fell, with delightful tenderness, through my eyes like rain on the desert. I cannot say enough to recommend this book, nor to express my personal sense of gratitude that I have been led to return to the literature of this period. You don’t find too many identified as an interlocutress in the popular fiction of today!

What a wonderful word. Interlocutress. The vocabulary, punctuation and style of Henry James writing is most rewarding. his characterisations so extreme and yet so palpable so as to elicit your approval of character’s actions as befitting their disposition. It also tends to push one towards longer sentences and more complete, if not more deep, circles of thought.

As a final thought it is a strange thing to be reading fiction which includes, as a matter of course, sections on further reading, appendices and a lengthy and scholarly introduction. Should you worry that the Bostonians is in any way oppressive then you need not continue in such a vein. It is a wonderful book. Well written and styled. I particularly enjoyed the review of ideas and behaviours so entirely alien from those popular today. I suppose Basil was always going to lose the war but the account of the battles and skirmishes between Olive Chancellor and himself filled many a minute of otherwise restless commuting. More please!

Erewhon

Gareth — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:43:05 +0000

I don’t think I am qualified to pen a full review for this book. Erewhon, the first of the good, literary reads for 2010 may emerge to have been a poor starting place. The Penguin edition I loaned from the public library contains a lengthy exposition, called an introduction, which I feel attempts to explain why Erewhon is a wonderful work of literature. I wasn’t sold.

Don’t get me wrong, it is remarkable; published in 1872 by Samuel Butler, at first anonymously and extremely successfully and later, foolishly perhaps, under his own name Erewhon has plenty of good points. The story of it’s publication is an curious one, Samuel Butler, a gentleman of independent means paid for the printing himself. He was bold, choosing to print a thousand copies when many first editions of the period ran to five hundred.

The opening passages are wonderful. Butler loved the landscape he described and he had a talent for capturing scale and detail in a gentle and persuasive way. I missed the landscapes for the rest of the book. If Butler had continued to describe Higg’s meanderings for the rest of the book I would personally have considered it the work of a master. It’s certainly comparable in quality and mood to Hardy’s heath in The Return of the Native.

Unfortunately as soon as Higg’s makes it past the crest of the last hill Butler moves from the terrain he loves to the apparently unfamiliar territory of interpersonal relationships and, ewww, love. These are the vehicles which Butler employs to communicate his ideas. I can’t fault the value attached to these ideas, nor the praise awarded to Butler, however late it’s arrival. It’s just not good reading anymore. Where the landscape was broad and full of details you wanted drawn courteously to your view the more philosphical elements expand in proportion until they obviate the tale itself.

Melville manages to conceal his whaling manual far more successfully and he certainly wasn’t appreciated the first time round. So too is my reaction to Erewhon. Even the names, such as Nosnibor and Senoj, felt lazy rather than allegorical and the constant references to Swift, the Empire, and Darwin, while intellectually satisfying stultified the script and ruined the prose. Ultimately this is a book that will lay unread for some time before I feel it deserves a re-reading.

Word of the day: Preterite

-adjective

1 – Grammar. noting a past action or state.

2 – Archaic. bygone; past.

Dark Fire – by CJ Sansom

Gareth — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:06:02 +0000

The second of fifty-two books I will read this year is Dark Fire. A cajoling crime novel set in Henry VIII’s sixteenth century London. Falling from the pen of Christopher Sansom, himself qualified to practice law in England and Wales, the plot follows humble, honest, and yet streetwise barrister Matthew Shardlake as he investigates a murder and the disappearance of the eponymous Dark Fire. You take a curious character, hump and all, and drop him in the thick of the historic plots against Thomas Cromwell.

I should be candid. This is not a great work of literature. I have not yet acquired new books to read and so while I struggle to find the time to visit my local library I have taken to borrowing books from the shelves of willing friends. Sansom brings the plot along at wondrous pace and where I found myself sometimes lonely and wandering in works such as Captain Corelli’s Mandolin or Music and Silence there is not a moment to spare for middle aged Matthew as he hurries around the capital unearthing a slew of plots and bodies on the way.

While there are those who have complained about the constant references to the weather I found them refreshingly repetitive. After all, my own life is full of comments about the weather, it’s an important part of practically every conversation I am involved in. Well, perhaps at least those which include strangers. For the peripatetic hero, Shardlake to make a reference or two to the weather in London felt very natural to me. So much so that I wouldn’t have even commented on it should it not have been picked up elsewhere.

When he isn’t commenting on the weather or feeling hungry Master Shardlake is a very entertaining man to follow. His honesty with not only others but with himself is a delight to follow. I would perhaps have preferred it if he had remained an entirely sedentary character but must wistfully admit that his involvement in the little physical action in the book does lend to the drama of the novel as a whole.

Despite the lack of splendour in the writing the novel provided plenty of entertainment. I suppose I should say something of what it is about, but I’m not going to. At least, not beyond mentioning that the discovery of a barrel of Greek Fire serves as an excellent vehicle for a romp around the London of the time with all of its customs, features, persons and laws well explained and explored by an intriguing character. I learned all too late that this is the third in a trilogy. Will I read the first? No. The third? Probably.

Mind you I would be most pleased if I could write something like this.

Word of the day: Abscission
-noun
1 – The act of cutting off; sudden termination
2 – Botany. The normal separation of leaves, petals, and fruit from plants

Swallows and Amazons

Gareth — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 23:57:40 +0000

As you may have guessed my first good book of the year is Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. I read it a long time ago now and realising how close I was to falling behind with my reading I snatched it from the shelf and re-read it. It’s changed. The tale of the young Walkers has become very much shorter than I recalled. It seemed such a big book when I last thumbed its pages.

Just in case you haven’t visited with the Walkers yourself, Swallow and Amazons is the tale of four young children who camp on an island in a lake. I suppose I could call it the lake as it forms for the duration of the story the entire world. Everything and everyone outside of the children’s narrative is suspiciously referred to as ‘native’. Although mother is rather well regarded, despite being herself a native.

Upon finishing it I see that it is more of a good story than literature, so perhaps I will have to read another book to keep up with myself. Despite this I do not count the time wasted as I have thoroughly enjoyed the jaunt through my own sailing memories and look forward eagerly to next week’s literary treat.

Word of the day: Flocculent
-adjective
1 – like a clump or tuft of wool
2 – covered with a soft, wooly substance
3 – flocky
4 – consisting of flocs and floccules (chemistry)